I explore the hero's journey with my students throughout the year by exploring works from Beowulf to Macbeth. This lesson originally appears in a unit for The Canterbury Tales on CC.BetterLesson.

My classes are held in 100-minute block sessions. This activities in this lesson take the better part of two class periods to complete.

The lesson plan below outlines day one on The Prologue of The Canterbury Tales. Instead of having students read the entire Prologue, I jigsaw the section, assigning a character to each student for analysis and introduction (Assignment: Prologue - Who are you?) to the class. Character introductions (Student Work: Sample 1 - Prologue Assignment) take place during the day two activities outlined in a subsequent lesson plan.

I have students pre-read lines 1-41 and lines 767-856 from the Prologue of the modern English translation by Nevill Coghill in Language of Literature (McDougal Littell, 2003) so that they can read the marginal notes that explain allusions and unfamiliar vocabulary. Next, I read aloud lines 1-41 and lines 767-856 to students so that we can process the complex language as a class. I ask students questions (Questions: Selected Lines from Prologue) to assess their understanding of the premise of The Canterbury Tales.

Resources (1)

Resources

Our district curriculum only includes the following excerpts in the order as listed below from The Canterbury Tales in our textbook The Language of Literature (McDougal Littell, 2003):

Prologue

Excerpt from The Pardoner's Prologue

Excerpt from The Pardoner's Tale

Excerpt of 30 Lines from The Wife of Bath's Prologue, which includes the Pardoner's comments

The Wife of Bath's Tale.

Even though our curriculum does not allow for students to read all of The Canterbury Tales, I think it is important for students to understand the diversity of pilgrims in the text since they are adolescents, trying to figure out "Who am I? Who am I in relation to others?"

Instead of having students read the 23-page Prologue, I decide to jigsaw it and assign each student a character to analyze and introduce to the class (Assignment: Original Prologue Assignment). While explaining the assignment, I show students a sample of student work from a neighboring 12th grade honors class so that they can see what their product should look like.

While explaining the assignment, I realize that item 2, "Write an introduction you will use to introduce YOURSELF as the character," should actually be completed after students analyze and interpret the character description Chaucer outlines. As a result, I actually revise the instructions and tell the students to do item 2 after items 1, 3, and 4 so that they have time and opportunity to process who their assigned character is before synthesizing their knowledge by writing their introduction. I revise the instructions (Assignment: Revised Prologue Assignment) for subsequent classes.

Mariailsa Garcia:
I am so excited that I found YOU! I appreciate all your hard work and I was able to engage my students with your amazing lessons! |
one month ago |
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Kelly Roberts:
This is an excellent lesson which will work well with my senior class of 35 students. My students are very active, and need engagment, so allowing them to ask one another questions as characters instigates the engagement. |
3 months ago |
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